Rikki Abzug

Nonprofit Boards: Crucibles of Expertise or Symbols of Local Identities?

Nonprofit boards, as boundary spanners, often serve the institutional purpose of affording legitimacy to organizations. Neo-institutional theory suggests that nonprofit organizations, as particularly susceptible to legitimacy demands of changing environments, would tend toward rationalizing internal structures. This article, using historical panel data, explores the extent of one form of rationalization, recruiting trustees with college education and/or professional or managerial occupations. It finds that trustees with college education, managers, and professionals continue to have significant representation on nonprofit boards. Also, many boards are increasingly less exclusive with respect to gender, race, and religion. Some select nonprofit boards, however, continue to be dominated by different gender, racial, and religious identities, suggesting that nonprofit boards also serve the purpose of representing different identity and/or interest groups in the community.

Relationships between Nonprofit and for-Profit Organizations: A Stakeholder Perspective

The purpose of this article is to provide a new, more comprehensive stakeholder theory of the relationships between nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors. This theory combines aspects of neoclassical economics and principal-agency theory to complement the traditional notions that these organizations either compete or exist in a vacuum relative to one another. The article discusses nonprofit organizations that are employee groups (unions and professional associations), shareholders (institutional investors including pension funds and endowments), community and other interest groups, government contractors, competitors, consumers, and suppliers. By viewing these organizations as agents relative to a principal for-profit (or government) organization, it is possible to hypothesize about relationships and behaviors between organizations of different sectors of the economy. This new perspective allows a better understanding of the many relationships observed in the nonprofit sector and of a much greater range of nonprofit stakeholders than is currently possible given existing theory.

Bandwagon or Band-Aid? A Model of Nonprofit Incorporation by State

What accounts for the addition of new nonprofit organizations in different U.S. states? Do new nonprofit organizations answer calls for help (Band-Aid) or calls for proposals (bandwagon) at their inception? Are nonprofit entrepreneurs pushed by the failures of government and the market or pulled by the legitimacy of the organizational form? This comparative research models the level of nonprofit incorporation in different U.S. states given fragmented legal environments, variable organizational legitimacy, and different levels of social needs. Drawing from institutional, resource dependence, population ecology, and social movement theories and using data from state legal codes, judicial decisions, the U.S. census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Nonprofit Almanac, 1992-1993, we explore the environmental and interorganizational forces that influence the level of nonprofit incorporation by state.

Do Occupational Group Members Vary in Volunteering Activity

The goal of our study is to explore how employees in different occupations report volunteering activities. Starting from the literatures on occupational subcultures and professional norms, the authors hypothesize that both structural constraints and norms of occupations may have an impact on extraorganizational behavior. Analyzing Center on Philanthropy Panel Study data linked with the Institute for Social Researchs Panel Study on Income Dynamics, the authors find evidence that individuals in professional, managerial, and military occupations are more likely to volunteer than are individuals in other occupational categories. Controlling for individual demographic and cultural variables, they affirm the explanatory power of occupation on individual volunteering behavior.

Nonprofit Trusteeship In Different Contexts

This text builds on the few existing historical studies of United States trusteeship and explores the factors affecting the structure of non-profit boards through modelling the effects and interactions of time, place, and organizational type on the makeup of the population of non-profit boards.

Nonprofits in Organizational Sociology's Research Traditions: An Empirical Study

Neoinstitutional, population ecology, and resource dependence research traditions enjoy enduring popularity in the American organization science and sociological literature. Such research traditions are advanced through empirical studies of organizations—non-profit, public, and for-profit. Noting some nonprofit lineage of the aforementioned traditions, this empirical study seeks to measure the use of sectors’ organizations in the advancement of generalized organization theory. To do this, the author develops and explores three research questions about the current uses of the research traditions and organizational samples, by sector, in journals of organization theory. A brief discussion of findings and implications follows.

Religious Affiliation, Religious Attendance, and Participation in Social Change Organizations

How does religion affect an individual’s likelihood of volunteering for social change causes? This study reports on findings from an analysis of the 2005 wave of the COPPS supplement to the PSID to examine the effects of religious tradition (affiliation) and religious attendance (religiosity) on social change volunteering. We find that adherents to the more liberal Christian denominations—mainline Protestant and Catholic—are more likely to volunteer with social change organizations than are Evangelicals. We also find that adherents to other minority religions such as Judaism and Buddhism and individuals with no religious belief are all more likely to volunteer with social change organizations than are Evangelicals. We find a positive and significant relationship between religious attendance and social change volunteering, but find little difference in the effect of religious attendance on social change volunteering between Evangelicals and other religious traditions (except for Catholics).

Nonprofits As Large Employers:A City-Level Geographical Inquiry

Where do nonprofit organizations rank as large employers in cities? In particular, how do large nonprofits compare in size and rank with for-profit corporations and public organizations in different U.S. cities? Using data obtained from Chambers of Commerce, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and city business journals, the authors take a step in exploring the relationship of cities to large employing organizations by developing an organi zational/sectoral landscape of the 72 major metropolitan areas in the United States. The authors test hypotheses concerning the sectoral types of organizations that dominate the top 10 employers of cities, and the role of regionalism in patterning these observations is explored.

Extramarital affairs as occupational hazard: A structural, ethical (cultural) model of opportunity

The media is filled with tales of careers and lives derailed by extramarital affairs often depicting such affairs in organizational/occupational terms: affairs begin in and/or upend organizational life and certain occupations are rife with cheaters. Yet, organizational science has been relatively silent on the topic. A review of literature from psychology, sociology, and economics provides an opening for the organizational researcher through the concepts of structural and cultural opportunity. Employing insights from organizational research on occupations and ethics, it is the intention of this article to develop models of structural and cultural (ethical) climate antecedents of extramarital affair opportunity.

Nonprofit Financing to the Rescue? The Slightly Twisted Case of Local Educational Foundations and Public Education in New Jersey

Scholars have suggested myriad characterizations of the relationship between organizations of the nonprofit sector and government. We expand upon Young’s “slight twist” of the economic supplementary view of government/nonprofit partnership to develop a model to explain the variation in levels of funding by local educational foundations (LEFs) in New Jersey public school districts. Seeking to better understand this private financing of public education, we empirically test for correlates of these funding variations using Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 data. Although we could not empirically verify an inverse relationship between state aid to education and level of LEF granting, we did find some evidence of a direct relationship between such private financing and median household income. Our analysis supports a more historically nuanced explanation of the role of LEFs in New Jersey public education.